Raspberry Pi thoughts

I got my Raspberry Pi (model B) in the mail a few weeks ago, and I’m just starting to dig into it. I ordered from Newark/Element 14, and got it in just under 2 weeks. They’re quoting quite a bit longer, so it was a bit quicker than I expected.

If you’re not familiar with the Pi, it is a $35 700MHz ARM processor with 100Mbps Ethernet, HDMI, composite video, 1/8″ audio, dual USB, SD card reader, and a number of 3.3V GPIO pins. There are several different Linux distributions available that run on the device. The model A is about $10 cheaper, and doesn’t have Ethernet.

I’m a Debian user from way back, so I was pretty happy that there was a Debian release for the Pi. I’m currently running on a 2GB SD card that I had lying around, but it is a fairly tight fit, so I’d suggest (and I believe they do as well) that you go with at least a 4GB card.

Out of the box, I was able to get the GUI running and run some basic applications. SSH access is also enabled, so I was able to hook the board up to my switch and access it over the network for package management and command-line tools.

I was extremely happy that the distro included native packages for ARM. I run DD-WRT on my switch at home, and the busybox packages are a bit limited for my taste.

I’m thinking about running Nagios on the board and breaking out the GPIO pins to show some Nagios metrics on a LCD screen or LED bar graphs. I’ve done LCD stuff with the Arduino, but having Linux on the board itself really gives me a lot of flexibility on generating the data to be output to the screen. I’ve been looking at the elinux wiki for reference on how to use the GPIO pins, but haven’t really done anything with it so far. I’m a bit nervous about interfacing directly because these boards are a bit pricier than Arduino boards, but the GPIO pins are supposed to be able to source 500mA, so that should be plenty for what I’m trying to do.

Love to hear your thoughts on what you’re planning on doing with your R. Pi in the comments!